Someone has finally launched a meta booking engine for hostels and I think this idea will eventually have an effect on hostels.
For example, this image says a lot:
One hostel booking engine is offering dorms at €6.34 and another booking engine is offering dorms at €17.55 -- for the same hostel.
I doubt that hostel is going to sell many beds through the booking engine with higher prices.
Also, if more sites begin creating meta search engines, booking engines may have to drop their $2 booking fees. It's good for Hostelbookers in the meantime though...
I think there is still a market for someone to create a product that manages hostel booking engine allocation through one interface. It would be good for hostels and good for the smaller booking engines that don't get as many allocations.
There is a product called Siteminder that manages allocations across multiple booking engines, but I haven't heard back from them and I'm not sure whether it's integrated with hostel booking engines yet.
Do you think meta booking engines will have an effect on the hostel industry?
16 years
Cool.
Still a bit "beta" - it does not know "Vienna", only "Wien". It imports the Hostelworld microsite text (I´m amazed Hostelworld doesn´t mind!?), complete with bold-tags and font-size-tags. Looks a bit strange. It does not (yet) import reviews from other sites.
Anyway, a good site. All I wonder about is why something like that didn´t pop up years earlier!
16 years
It imports the Hostelworld microsite text (I´m amazed Hostelworld doesn´t mind!?), complete with bold-tags and font-size-tags.
The booking engines encourage their affiliates to use their text and images... the more bookings the affiliates make, the more the booking engines make.
I wonder if more meta booking sites will appear... it's a good idea... :)
16 years
The booking engines encourage their affiliates to use their text and images...
Yes, but I wonder if they also encourage their affilliates to have other gods - i.e. be also affiliates of other booking engines.
16 years
It's fairly standard for hotel/hostel affiliate programs to make free content available. I think if a booking engine didn't make their content available, affiliates would go use whichever booking engine that did make their content available.
Also, there is a trick that some booking engines use -- which is to have each affiliate link back to the booking engine in a way that promotes high search engine rankings for the booking engine. That is one of the reasons why certain booking engines dominate the search engine results. It's worth it for the booking engines to give out their content if they can get hyperlinks.
Hostels usually copy/paste the same info for all the booking engines so the booking engines don't really control the content anyway...
16 years
You may be right, they have no other choice.
I think TFThostels has enormous potential. If I had any money, I´d ask them if they let me invest it! :)
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